


Artificial Respiration

by cheerynoir



Series: Drowning!verse [6]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Drinking & Talking, Drinking to Cope, F/M, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Second Person, Pining, Robb is a mess, Theon is his anchor, Theon is oblivious, Theon is transparent and Robb is hurting, drunk Robb is cuddly, god these idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 14:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3613101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheerynoir/pseuds/cheerynoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em> June.</em>
</p>
<p>Robb gets dumped. Theon's there to pick up the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artificial Respiration

The first decent sleep you’ve had all week, and your phone wakes you at just past two AM. You’d ignoring the ringing, but the song that’s blaring – _you are my favourite “what if”, you’re my best “I’ll never know”_ – is wired into your blood at this point. Your arm moves without thought, and you might still be asleep when you hit talk.

“You better be dying,” you mumble, rough with sleep, phone at your ear, eyes squeezed shut against the wash of light from the screen.

“Theon?”

Your eyes snap open and you drag yourself upright. Because it’s not like Robb doesn’t call. True, they’ve tapered off recently, because he’s got exams and a girlfriend and a soccer team to lead, and you have work and Ramsay, but it isn’t as though you’re on radio silence. But he’s never called at two in the morning, deep in his cups. He’s never sounded _ruined_.

“Robb,” you reply. Your room is dark, but you throw back the covers and start hunting for clothes off your floor anyway. There’s a tight, cold feeling in your chest that you don’t want to examine too closely.

“Hey. What’s up – did I wake you?” he asks. His voice breaks a little, and if you weren’t worried before, you are now. He’s trying for casual, but you almost want to tell him to stop – that he’s overdoing it. 

(Take it from a professional, kid.)

“Nah, man,” you husk. You try to work up enough saliva to wet your throat, and after a minute – jerking your jeans up your naked hips – it works. “But you’re lucky you caught me. I was about to crash for the night.”

“Yeah?” he asks. “That’s – good. Good timing.”

“Yeah.” You glance around spy a shirt hooked over the bedpost and shrug into it, fingers flying over the buttons. You’re grateful that Ramsay is away. A week-long trip out of town – business with his father. Justifying this to him would be … difficult. You give your head a shake: Robb needs you. Why else would he call you so late, trying so hard for casual it was a wonder he didn’t sprain something?

(Fucking Starks, you think, not for the first time. Fucking Robb. Never could ask for help worth a goddamn, could you?)

“You at home?” you ask.

He snuffles, mumbles something. There’s a rustling on the other end of the line. You force a little bit of lightheartedness into your tone, to mask the rising panic. “I can’t actually see you nodding, Stark. Use your mouth-words, huh?”

“As opposed to my foot-words?”

“Just so.”

He laughs wetly, a rough, pathetic sound. “Okay, if you say so. I’m at home. Smalljon’s – was – with me.”

“Why isn’t he anymore?” Smalljon’s a big guy, but if he left Robb alone when he was like this – abandoned him to whatever bullshit he was going through – you wouldn’t think twice about taking a baseball bat to his kneecaps. Hell, you probably wouldn’t even think once.

“Asleep,” Robb mumbles. You hear him shrug over the line. “Um. Work in the morning, long day. He passed out about an hour ago. I’m okay-”

_Like fuck you are._

“-I just. I don’t want to be alone. Will you – will you talk to me for a bit?”

“Whatever, I wasn’t doing anything, anyway,” you says, all faux-casual, because you’ve spent ten years being nonchalant as far as this kid is concerned – if you started getting openly worried, he might die of shock, “Might as well. Give me half an hour and pour yourself a stiff fucking drink. You sound like you need it, and I do my best talking in-person.”

“Yessir,” he says after a long pause. You think you can hear the reluctant smile in his tone. “One for you too?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Stark. Make it a double.”

You don’t actually remember getting to Robb’s shared apartment in the North part of town. You must have taken the subway, because there are tokens in your pocket and the smell of the tunnels clings to your jacket, but there are no memories in your head of flying down the steps on Pyke or climbing them on Winter Avenue. 

You don’t bother knocking. It’s two-forty in the morning and you have a key. You’ve had it since he moved in a couple of years ago, pressed it into your palm like it was no big deal, a casual ‘just in case.’ There’s no sign of Smalljon in the living room and the kitchen is dark. You make your way down the hall, hear Smalljon’s lumber-jack snoring behind his closed door and glimpse the light spilling from under Robb’s door.

You knock twice and push your way in without waiting. 

The room is destroyed. 

He’s cleared his desk onto the floor, you observe as you step over the debris. Clutter litters the floor – clothes and books and knickknacks, pictures in broken frames. You think you spot a tube of Jeyne’s lipstick, tangled with a forgotten necklace. The air reeks of spicy-sweet perfume, and the bottle crunches under your boot when you cross the room to shove open the window. There’s a damp patch on the wall-plaster and you grimace at it.

“Have a good tantrum?” you ask. He glances up from where he’s slumped at the edge of his bed. He shrugs. The motion is loose and easy. There’s a glass on the table with a couple of fingers of something strong and amber inside.

“It was unkind of me,” he says. You’re surprised he’s not slurring. “I shouldn’t have done that.” He’s clinging to an empty glass and you pry it from his fingers, only to replace it with something more fulfilling. Thank the Gods for all-hours liquor stores. It’s vodka, because it was the first thing you laid your hands on, but Robb doesn’t seem to mind when he brings it to his lips.

“Tastes like rubbing alcohol,” he says when he comes up for air.

“Good, have some more,” you reply. You drop down, ease yourself out of your boots, and join him on the edge of his bed. You wait until he’s done as he’s told and drunk another couple of mouthfuls before you steal the bottle, take a swig, and ask, “Okay, now, what the fuck happened that you’re calling me at two AM in tears?”

“I wasn’t crying.”

You just look at him, all raised eyebrows and faintly incredulous smile. He takes the bottle from you, grimaces. Drinks. 

( _Good boy._ )

“Maybe I was a little,” he says. Then, quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “Jeyne broke up with me.”

You figured as much. Short of a death in the family, you doubt there’s much that Robb would lean on you for, not when you’re such a human disaster. Jon usually suited better, or so you’d assume. 

For a moment, you have to tramp down a sense of satisfaction, cut through a wave of vicious pleasure. Almost immediately you hate yourself so utterly it’s a wonder you don’t wither away and die under the intensity of it. You shouldn’t be _pleased_ that your best friend has been dumped and looking to you for a shoulder to lean on. You shouldn’t be _pleased_ that you won’t have to share his attention with anyone else. You shouldn’t –

But that’s the same old song and dance.

“Fuck her, then,” you say, when you can speak without cackling or crying. “Her loss.”

He shakes his head a little and takes another sip from the bottle. “She deserved better. Nearly a year together and she – she deserves better than me,” he says, so quietly you wonder if you were meant to hear.

You laugh. You can’t help it. “Who?” you ask, grinning. “Baelor the Blessed? Come on, Robb. Be real.”

You can’t imagine having this boy in your bed, in your life, having him look at you like the sun and the stars combined, and letting that go willingly. But then again, you’ve always been a greedy thing.

“’m serious,” he says, but falters. He shakes his head, curls swaying. “I don’t wanna talk about it. I just wanna…” he trails off, gesturing a little with the bottle. Vodka sloshes, and you bite your tongue to keep from telling him not to waste it. “I want to get drunk and watch Netflix and pretend everything’s okay for a while.” He looks at you and his eyes are blue and shot through with red, shiny with water and grief. He’s twenty-one and thinks himself immortal, but this is a new pain, and it brings him low. He’s twenty-one, but he’s never seemed like such a boy.

(You hate Jeyne Westerling intensely for a moment, so hotly and violently that it steals your breath and clouds your vision in red. For reducing Robb to this. For taking his hard-won smiles and his serenity, his calm, and turning into this. Into tears and pain. You _loathe_ her. But you’ve always been a hateful creature.) 

(Robb’s always brought out the best and worst in you.)

“Can we just do that for a while, Theon? Please?”

“Yeah,” you say, feeling useless. He’s far too fucking drunk for any of this. You touch him clumsily, wrap an arm around shoulders that heave and shudder like the deck of a ship in a summer storm. He leans into you immediately, tucks himself against your side and wraps his fingers up in your misbuttoned shirt. “Yeah. Netflix and lies. Sounds like my typical Tuesday, to be honest.”

He laughs, though you hadn’t been joking. You nick the bottle from his grip and tip it back, take a long, long slug of it just to feel the cheap booze wash down your throat. 

So that’s how you end up slumped against his headboard with a laptop in front of you, tangled close as quotation marks. You’re not really watching the movie he put on, barely register the basic details, because he’s close and warm and using you like a damn teddy bear. He smells good, too, – soap and citrus shampoo – and it’s distracting. But you’d rather be distracted than breathe in Jeyne’s perfume, which seems to infect the room, so you think nothing of turning your head a little, resting your chin on his hair like he’s got his face tucked up against your neck.

You’re more than three-quarters through the bottle, trading it back and forth languidly, Robb drinking the lion’s share, when he mumbles, “Don’t you want to know why?”

You pass him back the bottle, a buzz in your system you have no intention of letting flower into full drunkenness. Not when Robb needs you, and not when Robb needs it more. He drinks because you give it to him, and some trickles down his chin. 

(You picture leaning forward a bit and licking the spill away, sucking the vodka from his bitten-red lips and tangling your hands in his hair to pull him in for a proper kiss, slow and easy and hotter than the air outside, but it’s there and gone, blink an you’ll miss it. You should be used to it. Instead, your stomach twists, half in guilt and half in wanting. It’d be so easy – but you don’t think you could live with yourself if you treated Robb like you used to treat one-night-stands.)

He wipes at it clumsily. You let out a quiet breath, relief washing over you like cool water, because the temptation is – not gone, never gone, but manageable, at least. You wonder how much he had before you showed up.

“Thought you didn’t want to talk about it,” you remind him, but gently. He shrugs, and you feel it instead of see it. His grip on your middle tightens, his chin digs into your chest.

“But it’s you,” he says, like it’s everything and nothing. You try very hard to ignore the swell of warmth in your chest at that. You are his exception. You have been since he was nine, more or less. It’s – it’s flattering, and not what he intends. You are his brother, now and always.

(You wish you could be content with that – Gods, you do. You _do._ )

“Alright,” you say, and you hate the softness in your voice. You are splintered pieces and sharp angles and brittle bones, but you are edgeless and worn smooth for this boy with the oceans in his eyes. “Out with it, then. What’s the trouble?”

“She uh.” He pauses, drinks a little more. It takes him an age to fumble the cap back on and let the bottle fall back to his bedcovers, more empty space than alcohol. “I’m in love with someone else. And she… didn’t like it, much.”

Your eyebrows shoot up, but he’s not looking at you. He’s tracing absent patterns against your clavicle, his touch so light it tickles. You set your jaw and force yourself to be loose and easy. Pliant. There is jealousy roaring through you, a forest fire, a flood, but you – you smother it, like you smother everything. You bite your tongue to keep from demanding a name.

(he needs you he needs you he needs you keep it together, just until he passes out keep it together _he needs you—_ ) 

“That’s hardly gentlemanly,” you say, when you can speak without wanting to scream and scream and scream. You kind of want to demand an Oscar right now: you’re teasing him, but gently. Sweetly. Like his breath on your neck and his hands on you, always. “Dating one person when you’re in love with someone else. Were you when you first asked her out?”

“I didn’t know!” he flounders. He scrubs his hands over his face and tucks himself all the closer. “I didn’t know,” he mumbles into your shirt. It shouldn’t be endearing – but here you are, biting the inside of your cheek to keep from doing something stupid. You want to be angry with him. You want to hate him half as much as you love him, but you know a lost cause when you see it. So you’d settle for anger, but even that’s an uphill battle.

“Until I did,” he goes on, tearing you from your thoughts. “And she – she knew before I did, I think. And she... It’s good. That she went. She deserves better,” he seems quite certain of this – sad, yes, but certain.

You want a name. You want to know who’s going to steal him away next. You want to know who you’ve lost to.

(But no, that’s not right, is it? You have to be competing to lose.)

You sigh instead, bump your forehead against his temple – an affectionate headbutt. Your lips graze his cheek. “She’s going to have a hard time finding someone, then,” you mutter. You’re glad he’s shitfaced – it will make denying this all the easier tomorrow. You reach for the neglected vodka bottle and twist off the cap with your teeth, dimly aware of his eyes on you. You drink, offer him some, sloshing the bit that’s left in what you hope is a tempting manner.

“You’re supposed to say that,” he tells you, smiling, crooked and sweeter than honey. “You’re my best friend.”

There’s a heat low in your gut and you can’t tell if it’s from Robb pressed flush to you or the booze you’ve drunk on an empty stomach. Another mouthful doesn’t make it any clearer, but Robb’s hand, hot over yours when he takes the bottle from you to take a pull, helps straighten things out. In a matter of speaking.

You watch his mouth, his lips around the bottle and the way his throat works when he swallows and empties it.

You’d love to say it’s only habit, but you’re not that good of a liar, not even to yourself.

“Yeah,” you say after a minute. You smirk, but it takes another minute. You feel heavy and hot and languid, and it’s half because of the drink and half because of the company and half because it’s four-thirty in the morning and you need to sleep more. But you swallow and say, “What’re friends for, if not shoring up shitty self-esteem and hating exes when you’re too fucked to do it yourself? Forget about it.”

Robb just chuckles and rests his forehead in the hollow of your throat. His beard scratches at your skin and you bite back a soft sound at the feel of it. Your toes curl, and he hooks an ankle around yours.

He’s mumbling now, and it’s familiar – Robb cuddles when he’s drunk and you’ve shared a bed too often for it not to be second-nature. The words don’t make much sense, brothers and loves and pleases, so you nudge him until he peels himself away so you can catch more than one in every seven words. He looks at you and his eyes are wide and blue and you’re hit with the same want you had last November.

You may as well be standing on that bridge again, the water black below you and the cold wind at your back, for how much the want has eased.

You want to drown in those pretty blue eyes. It might even be peaceful.

So you lean down and kiss him.

You’re not thinking of anything but the red of his lips and the want in your chest, the sweet ache of it like holding your breath for too long. There’s a mantra running through your mind, low and breaking, _please-please-please_.

It’s a sweet kiss; soft, lips barely brushing, half-parted and damp. But you linger, you can’t help it. You’re afraid to breathe for fear of ruining it, and your hands are useless, knotted in the covers like they haven’t been since you were twelve and didn’t know what to do with them. But you linger for a handful of seconds, wanting. 

It is the chastest kiss you’ve given in years. 

But Robb still flinches back like you’ve ground a cigarette out on his arm. You feel something break inside you. He doesn’t meet your eyes, and the pleading in the back of your mind bleeds into a scream, wordless and getting louder.

“Stop – stoppit. Don’t,” he’s saying, and it’s taking everything in you to keep from running. Your knuckles whiten in his sheets, and you watch, helpless, as he fumbles his way through shutting down his laptop, in recapping the empty bottle, mumbling excuses all the while. “We – you. We should sleep. It’s – it’s late. Early. Something. And we’re. We’re drunk. We’re really really drunk. Go to sleep, Theon.”

“Sure, Robb,” you manage at last. The words come at a great distance. He smiles at you, red-faced and tense, and you look away. “Whatever you want,” you say to his dresser, blinking hard and fast.

You slip away the moment you hear his breathing even out. You don’t leave – you want to, desperately, but something keeps you in the apartment like a ghost with unfinished business. You take the bottle into the kitchen, swaying a little, and put it in the recycling bin as quietly as you can, and fumble your way in the dark to the bathroom. 

Careful, careful, you shut the door and lock it. You stare at yourself in the mirror, your reddened face and watery eyes and trembling lips. Your tousled hair and rumpled, mismatched clothing. You let out a shuddering breath, shoulders hitching, and lean forward quickly to start the tap. You scrub cold water over your face and neck until you lose feeling there, and grind the heels of your shaking hands into your eyes.

( _please please please_ )

You let out a hard breath, laughter at the edges of it. You look at yourself in the mirror and hold eye-contact as you plaster on a smile. Your teeth are a little crooked, but white, you notice. Shark teeth, maybe. 

You’re buzzing and nauseous and you’ve fucked everything up.

You shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve always fucked it up, in the end.

Water trickles down your face and you wipe at it with trembling palms, hurried and furtive. It’s cold. Your hands are cold, the water is cold, you’re chilled to the core. You can’t swallow for the lump in your throat and the world won’t swim into focus for the water in your eyes.

(from the sink, water from the sink, you’re fine, you’re fine you’re _fine-_ )

But your smile hasn’t faltered yet.

You’ve had enough practice.

**\---**

Robb calls you at sunset and you let it go to voice-mail. He didn’t wake up alone – what more did he want? You passed him a coffee and a donut from the place down the street when he finally woke up. Recounted the night – mostly, one detail left out – for his benefit. Expressed your condolences for his dead relationship with a straight face and the appropriate amount of solemnity in your tone. Clasped his shoulder like nothing was wrong and walked away like you weren’t three seconds from breaking into a sprint and never looking back. You left him Advil and water and a clean bedroom. 

What more did he want?

(You should be used to it by now, but rejection hurts. It’s never been _Robb_ before – it’s never stung this much. You shut your eyes and see the look on his face – flushed with drink and wide-eyed with shock, his lips a thin, unyielding line – clear as day and you want to throw up log after your barely-there hangover recedes.)

He calls again, after dinner. You don’t look at your phone until it stops ringing.

He calls again, and you leave your phone at home as you step out for your shift at the bar.

When you check your messages at half past three in the morning, there are a couple more voicemails and a handful of texts.

Figuring the texts are safer, you take a look. You get through “So about last night, did we…” before you delete everything and turn off your phone. Your pulse hammers in your throat and you wipe your clammy palms on your jeans. 

You can’t. You can’t. Acknowledging this means facing it, means you’ll have to deal with his rejection and the weirdness and his disdain stone cold sober and – you can’t. You just can’t.

If he tries again, you don’t hear it. 

(Eventually, he stops trying.)

**Author's Note:**

> If you though this had a happy ending, you really haven't been paying attention.
> 
> Sorry -- sorry! I couldn't resist. Thanks for reading, guys! Thanks to [Theonaf](http://www.theonaf.tumblr.com/), and everyone who commented or kudos'd - you're all fantastic. Let me know what you think of this? 
> 
> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://www.cheerynoir.tumblr.com/)!


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